Animals

Recently I have come upon a blog who claims to be written by a bear or Panda. The come from the blog https://kingdomofrhetoric.family.blog/ titled A Cute Panda and as such I assume that they are pandas. So far they have talked about their interactions with major current events such as the Australian fire. It describes three brotherly bears with their own personalities. They seem to be much acquainted with human life.

    Non-human characters have always been slightly confusing to me. In video games in general, non-human characters always have an element of surprise that human characters do not. In a previous Guilty Gear title, there is a character known as Leopaldon. “His” in-humane form is a surprise for the game. In a game series filled with humans, the addition of this is just unbelievable. On the other hand, it is one of many occurrences of some nonhuman characters. In Tekken there is a panda called Panda who fights among the human characters.

    In Smash Bros, the creator has preferred to keep the animal-like characters more beastly attributes. Characters like Bowser, Donkey Kong, and many more use animal noises in contrast to human speak like their origins. For Donkey Kong, he loses all his character in Smash Bros. He loses some of his personality in his games. In Super Smash Bros for the Wii U and 3ds he has gained some of his personality back. He has eyes pop out of his eyes whenever he gets hit to give him a cartoonish look, but overall, his main trait is that he is a giant ape. This can be seen in the way he fights. He fights with strong meaty hits and uses his size to overwhelm his opponent.

    Unlike how these games tend to make the non-human characters emphasize their non-human parts, the blog A Cute Panda makes the pandas human. We can see that they think and act exactly like how a human would. I have noticed this in cartoons and less realistic novels. Cartoons always tend to make animals more human in contrast to games. I can understand that this is done to make the animal more relatable. 

In A Cute Panda, they are given clothes, human features, etc. They demonstrate thinking capabilities and that they are able to be human when in reality they are not. They talk about Australia and have a solid understanding of government. They utilize technology like humans, such as the television and cell phone. What also surprises me is that the bears seem to understand what a savings are. They also seem to be extremely emphatical, even more than some players in the community. When talking about the Australian fire, they demonstrate a strong urge to help them. One of them expresses that they will donate everything to charity to help.

    Overall, I found it interesting about the humane nature of the animals and how they are more human than animal and remind me of animals in cartoons and contrast the image of animals in fighting games.